Well the wind has been blowing for weeks here on the northern California coast since the season opened on June 1st. There has only been one or two days that have been fish-able in that time, but on Sunday night, the 22nd, NOAA was predicting a very small window in the weather from late Thursday afternoon through late morning to early afternoon on Friday, so whats a guy supposed to do? Well get all your ducks in a row, make sure the honeydos are done, change the work schedule and pack gear and load the cuda 14 on the truck and wait.

As promised that window came, and in the wee hours of Friday morning i was headed to my beloved Sonoma coast for a day of fishing. I was hoping to troll for King salmon, but with the high winds and swell over the last few weeks all my contacts in the fleet hadn’t been out, so no info of where or if there were any salmon around. So made the decision to go for lingcod and rock fish, turns out it was a good choice. Was greeted by a beautiful sunrise, small breeze and a 3ft swell.

On the first drop i knew it was going to be a good day, as something big hit my swimbait, ran and broke me off. Luckily it wasn’t the last big hit off the day, with in the first thirty minutes i had nearly a limit of rock fish and a good brace of lingcod. The biggest excitement of the day was when i was bringing in a large black rock cod on my small rod, i see a big shadow under my cuda14. My first thought was oh no a seal, but then the monster darted out from the cover of my kayak straight towards the fish i have on. Knowing that the rod i was using was way to small to land a large hitchhiker lingcod I quickly pulled the black away from the ling but he kept coming. I started to do big figure eights with th fish like you would with a muskee to keep the lings interest, just as he started to go back to the depths I swung the black into the boat and grabbed the ling rod rigged with a 6 1/2in swimbait and dropped it in the water and hit free spool, about mid column what i had hoped would happen did as the large lingcod, who just missed out on a free meal, slammed the swimbait and the fight was on. A few minutes later i was holding this nice fish.

The rest of the morning went pretty much the same way, ended up catching a ton of fish, some big some not so, but it was a real pleasure and personal battery charge for the soul to finally be able to get on the water after so many weeks of bad weather. As predicted, by noon the wind was starting to build and by one it was time to get off the water. So when you see a break in the weather window, GO!